1. Technical Field
The present technique relates to the field of storage devices.
2. Technical Background
A data processing apparatus may have a storage device for storing data. For example the storage device may comprise a memory or cache. Data values may be read from the storage device and sent to a processor for processing and the result of processing operations may then be written back to the memory.
Some kinds of storage device identify the data values to be read or written using an address, which is decoded by an address decoder to select the storage cells to be read or written. However, in other types of storage device, known as a content addressable memory (CAM), a data value may be provided to the storage device as a search key and the storage device then compares the search key against each data word stored in the content addressable memory, and returns a match indication if one of the stored data words matches the search key.